musings from an informed urban planner and an uninformed TV writer

Chaos and meaning

According to this article from the Indian Express, in preparation for the Commonwealth Games in October, Delhi has put together teams to clamp down on the city’s animals — teams to control the “stray cattle menace” from illegal dairies (oh man those cows are scary) , sterilize stray dogs, and catch rats. The article made me wonder again if all this effort is worth it. Apparently, sponsorship money for the Games has been scarce, and the Government has begun forcing public sector enterprises to sponsor the Games (apparently, it now counts as part of their mandatory Corporate Social Responsibility quotas!). I wonder whether corporates are thinking the same thing I am: who watches the Commonwealth Games anyway? Nobody I know.

But the article also made me sad. I’ve lived in India on and off for about six years, and even on my loneliest days, I have never felt as desolate here as I remember feeling sometimes in the US. I can’t tell whether I’m just getting misty eyed as I think about leaving, but there’s something about life here that makes it feel richer, and these stray cows are definitely a part of it. I know that the informal sector almost always means terrible wages and awful working conditions, but there’s something about being in a place where the government seems to be unaware of and unable to control so much of the activity, economic and otherwise.